Cognos Pushes BI To the Masses

Hoping to push business-intelligence technology down to more users in the organization, Cognos on Monday released a new version of its Cognos 8 search product along with a new search service.

Among the several new features contained in Cognos 8 is the Extended Cognos Office Connection, which allows users to not just embed reports within Microsoft's Excel, but to also view, interact with and update Cognos 8 BI reports within PowerPoint. Company officials say this better ensures centralized control and management of data while also extending the reach of business-intelligence-related content out to more users.

Office Connection also makes it possible to enrich Microsoft Office documents with more accurate data along with the ability to share documents and other business-intelligence data across a company.

"With these improvements, we think we can help unlock the potential of the ERP investments users have made by providing intuitive ways to measure, monitor and analyze business information," says Leah MacMillan, vice president of product marketing at Cognos.

Some partners say they like what they see of the new version's capabilities and are optimistic it will appeal to less experienced users who need some of its querying and searching capabilities. One partner says he thought the product's ability to accept plain English queries, which can bring back detailed information on a very specific business topic, would appeal to many.

"Every executive, regardless of skill set, has used Yahoo or Google to fuzzy searches, but how many of those executives can create their own BI queries? A very small number. I think executives and other casual users normally intimidated by tools will be attracted to something like this," says Michael Langton, a partner with New Comp Solutions.

Cognos has also placed into the new version its Cognos 8 Report Packs for mySAP Fi/Co and Siebel CRM. Company officials believe the additions increase the value of existing IT investments for customers by providing them with the ability for the first time to combine in one report or dashboard historical data from a data warehouse with current data in transactional systems.

Some analysts see that ability as the product's key ingredient, and one that has been atop users' wish lists for some time.

"Organizations are constantly challenged to extend BI to more users and more data sources," says Dan Vesset, research director of Analytics and Data Warehousing Software at IDC. "I think these enhancements help Cognos meet demand to provide one holistic view of historical and current operational data in one product."

The capability reportedly gives users a more complete view of enterprise performance while eliminating costs typically needed for separate operational projects. The new Report Packs can also predefine content for about 60 commonly used reports that offer access to mySAP and Siebel CRM data within a given business context.

The enhanced version also has gained updated certification for SAP's NetWeaver, which lets users access data in the SAP Business Information Warehouse, as well as deploy Cognos 8 BI on the SAP Web Application Server and to display information through the SAP NetWeaver Portal.

The company's new BI search service, called Cognos Go!, let users find strategically important enterprise information using Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. The service, which is browser-based, will rank results based on the search priorities as set by the user. The service can deliver data residing in reports, dashboards, metric information and events held across an organization.